I actually grew to enjoy 4's soundtrack. Probably conditioning from the thousands of hours with it during Deal Breaker multiplayer.

But I liked Bowling with Roman!

Between Badly-Drawn Tony Soprano, Badly-Drawn Ice Cube, and Average GTA Gamer’s In-Game Actions Personified, what’s there to actually enjoy?

In other words, holy shit those characters were a complete waste.

The one thing that was magnificent about 5 was the Los Santos Island map.

Gorgeous. Richly-detailed in every inch of exterior. Lots of weird little areas all over the map. A technological masterpiece that people won’t soon forget.

And for me, that was pretty much the only thing they did right ... and even then, so…

Saints Row series is where it’s at. By SR4 though, they took it in the wildest new directions (super-powers!) that basically make storing cars a thing of the past.

Since they love money for nothing via Shark Cards, I’m probably never going to see those HD remakes of VC and SA that I’d have rather had instead of 5 and potentially a new shitty single player campaign in modern VC eventually when they get around to it somewhat half-past likely never. :D

I’m convinced that 4 retains a major stigma among pre-driving youths who played the game and somehow couldn’t into driving in it.

I’ve grown up in the boat-on-wheels tail end era in the US, and having a lot of those cars not be able to handle 90 degree turns at any GTA-level speed was refreshing as hell.

Plus the sports…

Despite my weird mind amalgamation of Ballmer’s “developers!” freakout replaced with the word “Milennials!” when I read this, I too have a special place in my heart for 1992 personified via GTA SA. R* nailed it, hands down.

I myself enjoyed Republican Space Rangers and their take on anime waaaay too much.

Didn’t bother with the TV shows in 5, because the story in 5 didn’t motivate me to spend virtual time living in it.

A lady kingpin in an earlier American era during the even-more-omnipresent sexism running rampant in prior decades probably would be fantastic for the easiest comedy they try to do generally anyway.

would also have been good kinja, agreed.

If they wanted a twist, take a page from Mafia franchise and do Carcer City in the 1950s.

Their take on the ‘current’ era in 5 was pure ass compared to 4's take. And R* seems to do better work with the hindsight of ‘retro’ in general.

for obvious reasons, I am a big fan of Crockett’s Theme.

the player-character creation for GTA O was incredible in inferiority to Saints Row’s. as far as capturing the materialism they seemed to be gunning for, nobody did it better than Saints Row 2 (which improved upon the GTA SA clothes/money/cars/properties thing for the HD era).

I’m expecting GTA 6 to lose the number and just be GTA Online 2: Electric Boogaloo set in Vice City or whatever. More of the Shark Card bullshit nobody wanted, but still got hooked on ... and made R* tons more on top of the game sales itself.

You and me both on 5. Single-player story was easily the worst of the…

GTA SA’s story wasn’t exactly irrelevant during the San Fierro part.

They extended the “holy shit my whole world got flip-turned upside-down” during the Back’o’Beyond section so that it took CJ a longer while to recover from that rug-pull.

If I had to do a study of that story, it’s probably more acts than just a…

I recently re-played GTA VC on PC on my modern rig about 2-3 years ago ... actually felt really damn good compared to its console-era releases and the lesser-powered PCs of that era.

Seemed much smoother than back-when, plus that story still felt good today.

Def agree on the GTA 4 tip. Way better city ambiance via NPC city-dwellers than in 5, actually enjoyed the driving very much, and the story was pretty damn cool, modern-day immigrant story set in recent-enough GWB-era earlier xenophobia (which probably will be made to look quaint compared to Trump-era).

“CARL JOHNSON, REMEMBA DAT!”

I remember CJ, I remember!

Switch GTA 5 to #14, and insert “being hit by a car” as #13, and you got yourself some good kinja